Ever since the moment that the towers fell, people have been saying that it was a controlled demolition. Now we might have academic evidence to prove the theory as fact!
An academic report was published by Europhysics News just in time for the anniversary of 9/11 is questioning the official explanation for the collapse of all three World Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2001. The conclusion may make even the most rational person rethink their outlook.
The report notes:
“It bears repeating that fires have never caused the total collapse of a steel-framed high-rise before or since 9/11. Did we witness an unprecedented event three separate times on September 11, 2001? The NIST [U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology] reports, which attempted to support that unlikely conclusion, fail to persuade a growing number of architects, engineers, and scientists. Instead, the evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that all three buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition. Given the far-reaching implications, it is morally imperative that this hypothesis be the subject of a truly scientific and impartial investigation by responsible authorities.”
Titles “15 Years Later: On the Physics of High-Rise Building Collapses,” the investigation was conducted by Steven Jones, a former professor emeritus of civil engineering at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada and fellow of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering and the Engineering Institute of Canada; Anthony Szamboti, a mechanical design engineer; and Ted Walter, author of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth’s Beyond Misinformation: “What Science Says About the Destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2 and 7.”
Here are some of the observations the researchers offered:
Fires Typically are not hot enough and do not last long enough in any single area to generate enough energy to heat the large structural members to the point where they fail.
Most-high rises have fire suppression systems, which further prevent a fire from releasing sufficient energy to heat the steel to a critical failure state.
Structural members are protected by fireproofing materials, which are designed to prevent them from reaching failure temperatures within specified time periods.
Steel-framed high-rises are designed to be highly redundant structural systems. Meaning, if a localized failure occurs, it does not result in a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure.
“Countless other steel-framed high-rises have experienced large, long-lasting fires without suffering either partial or total collapse,” the report points out.
“Indeed, neither before nor since 9/11 have fires caused the total collapse of a steel-framed high-rise—nor has any other natural event, with the exception of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which toppled a 21-story office building. Otherwise, the only phenomenon capable of collapsing such buildings completely has been by way of a procedure known as controlled demolition, whereby explosives or other devices are used to bring down a structure intentionally.”
The report goes on to confirm the scientists’ doubts regarding the official explanation by referencing the head structural engineer of the buildings. John Skilling, was interviewed by the Seattle Times following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who was concerned about a possible airplane attack, performed an analysis that proved the towers would withstand the impact of Boeing 707:
“Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed…The building structure would still be there…However, I’m not saying that properly applied explosives—shaped explosives—of that magnitude could not do a tremendous amount of damage…. I would imagine that if you took the top expert in that type of work and gave him the assignment of bringing these buildings down with explosives, I would bet that he could do it.”
It was also written that “The total collapse of WTC 7 at 5:20 pm on 9/11, is remarkable because it exemplified all the signature features of an implosion: The building dropped in absolute free fall for the first 2.25 seconds of its descent over a distance of 32 meters or eight stories. Its transition from stasis to free fall was sudden, occurring in approximately one-half second. It fell symmetrically straight down. Its steel frame was almost entirely dismembered and deposited mostly inside the building’s footprint, while most of its concrete was pulverized into tiny particles. Finally, the collapse was rapid, occurring in less than seven seconds. Given the nature of the collapse, any investigation adhering to the scientific method should have seriously considered the controlled demolition hypothesis, if not started with it. Instead, NIST (as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which conducted a preliminary study prior to the NIST investigation) began with the predetermined conclusion that the collapse was caused by fires.”
To this day, there is still a large amount of unexplained evidence that further supports the theory controlled demolitions took place on that horrendous day fifteen years ago. Not to mention the fact that media outlets reported on the collapse of WTC Building 7 before it even collapsed.
People will always speculate, and those of us who question the official story will continue to be labeled as crazy conspiracy theorists.
While the Turkish-American community was as usual pre-occupied with arts and entertainment ), during the exact same time the Armenian diaspora was busily continuing to lay the groundwork for an independent Nagorno-Karabağ.
I have attached the complete text of former Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian’s April 12, 2018 speech at the Harvard University Law School below. Turks as well as Azeris should pay heed since it not only mentions Nagorno-Karabağ but refers to “Kurdistan” as well and quite obviously the thesis of “Self-Determination” Oskanian was attempting to make would apply in both cases if one were to subscribe to it.
Enis Pınar
Kimden: USC Institute of Armenian Studies [mailto:armenian=Yerine USC Institute of Armenian Studies Tarih: Thursday, April 5, 2018 7:06 PM Konu: Self-Determination Under International Law: With Vartan Oskanian
April 12 – Harvard Law School Pound Hall – 12-1pm
After a series of lectures at University of Southern California, in a class called IN PURSUIT OF INDEPENDENCE, Vartan Oskanian, former Foreign Minister of Armenia, will be heading to Harvard University for a lecture on a matter that is at the crux of Armenia’s existence and future development.
Vartan Oskanian served as Armenia’s foreign minister from 1998 to 2008 and is the founder of Civilitas Foundation, a Yerevan-based education and advocacy NGO. He is a graduate of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Mr. Oskanian was a visiting assistant professor at the American University of Armenia and currently a visiting lecturer at the University of Southern California and Tufts University.
The talk will be moderated by Anna Crowe, Lecturer on Law and Clinical Instructor at the Human Rights Program of Harvard Law School.
Organized by:
West Coast Law Students Association
Middle East Law Students Association
Harvard International Law Journal
Harvard European Law Association
Sponsored by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research – NAASR
Former Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian Delivers Talk on Self-Determination at Harvard Law School (Full Transcript)
April 16, 2018
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (A.W.)—Armenia’s Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Vartan Oskanian delivered a talk at Harvard Law School titled “Self-Determination Under International Law: The Cases of Kosovo and Nagorno-Karabagh,” on April 12.
Oskanian speaking at Harvard Law School (Photo: Harout Ekmanian)
The talk was organized by the joint efforts of Harvard Law International Journal, Harvard West Coast Law Students Association, Harvard European Law Association, and the Harvard Middle Eastern Law Students Association. It was moderated Anna Crowe, Lecturer on Law and Clinical Instructor at the Human Rights Program of Harvard Law School, and sponsored by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR).
Oskanian addressed the right of self-determination in the cases of Kosovo and Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh) through the dual lenses of international law and global politics, as well as the origins and the evolution of the right for self-determination, and what the sources of international law say about it. He also touched upon the currently active self-determination movements, including Kurdish and Catalan referenda, and assessed the impact and relevance to these movements.
Before his talk at Harvard Law School, Oskanian delivered a series of lectures at the University of Southern California in a class called “In Pursuit of Independence.” Next fall, he will teach a course at Tisch College of Civic Life of Tufts University called “Special Topics in International Relations: The Politics of Self-Determination and Secession.”
Below is the full transcript of Oskanian’s talk at Harvard Law School.
‘Self-Determination Under International Law: The Cases of Kosovo and Nagorno-Karabagh’ Vartan Oskanian at Harvard Law School – April 12, 2018
Thank you for the invitation. I truly appreciate this opportunity.
Although my theme today is international law and, in particular, the law of self-determination and secession, let me reinforce the fact that I am not an international lawyer; have never argued or judged a case in international courts, nor represented any government in judicial proceedings. I am simply a practitioner of diplomacy.
My diplomatic and ten-year tenure as foreign minister of Armenia, and as Armenia’s chief negotiator for Nagorno-Karabagh conflict with Azerbaijan, propelled me to the forefront of diplomatic activities of one of the most pressing and trying global transformations: that of the emergence of great number of new independent states at the end of the Cold War and subsequently a parade of sub-state self-determination claims each with unforeseen consequences.
Nagorno-Karabagh was, and still is, one of them. So was Kosovo together with many others. This period coincided also with the emergence of many other secessionist movements outside the context of the unraveling of the USSR and Yugoslavia—South Sudan, Timor L’este, and later on Quebec, Scotland, and more recently Kurdistan and Catalonia.
If you are pursuing a self-determination claim, you need to pose and seek answers to two fundamental questions: First, is there enforceable international law or its all politics? Can we speak of international law as a coherent activity? Second, is there a law on self-determination and secession that minority groups can rely on to support their claims? The answer to these questions depends on who you ask, what the circumstances are, and the geopolitical interests of the rich and powerful.
There is a common belief in diplomatic and political circles that there are two kinds of international legal order. They concede the existence of law in areas such as trade, telecommunication or civil aviation while at the same time dismissing as mere unenforceable aspirations, laws on the use of force, human rights, sovereignty and self-determination. This duality of international law goes back, at least to early 1920s, to Hans Morgenthau, one of the founders of international relations and a realist in his outlook, who contrasted two different types of international law, a “functional international law” based on ‘permanent or stable interests’ and ‘political international law’ that was opportunistic, indeterminate and aspirational.
Before I move to the second question, whether there is a law on self-determination and secession that minority groups can rely on to support their claim, let me briefly talk about the sources of international law.
Unlike national law which is made in the legislature, international law creation is much more complex, and has a multitude of sources.
There are several sources of international law. One is international treaties and conventions; the second is international custom and the general principles of law, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law; and third, the subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law, such as judicial decision and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists. This also includes the United Nations General Assembly resolutions. For example, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of their Sovereignty (1965), Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States (1970), etc., are all treated as strong evidence of rules of customary international law.
The law of self-determination has its roots, not in treaties, that would have made things much simpler, but in the customs, general principles of law and the subsidiary means, such as UN General Assembly declarations and resolutions, judicial decisions and the writings of qualified publicist. And that is why the right of self-determination is more elusive in the context of law. And if we add to this that the issue of self-determination falls also in the domain of Morganthau’s “political international law,” it becomes even clearer the complexities associated with it and the divide it creates between the opponents and proponents of the right for self-determination..
The principle of self-determination developed as political idea and corollary to growing ethnic and linguistic political demands in the 18th and 19th centuries. Those times equating a nation with a homogeneous populace was very common. It gained prominence when President Wilson became the most public advocate of self-determination as a guiding principle in the post-war period, but was never fully implemented as the allies were guided mostly by political considerations to buttress Germany and the Soviet Union.
It was only after the founding of the UNin 1945 that the principle of self-determination began a gradual shift to a more enforceable right to freedom from colonial rule. The UN Charter, of course, explicitly refers in its Article 2(1) to the self-determination of peoples, but it is its Chapters XI and XII on non-self-governing and trust territories that gave the principle its more enforceable character, eventually transforming self-determination from principle to right.
During the 1950s and 1960s The UN General Assembly passed several resolutions granting independence to colonial territories and countries. All of them had two things in common; the focus was on territory rather than people and had a “safeguard clause” stressing the preservation of territorial integrity, by stating that “any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
In 1966, the adoption of two international human rights covenants—one on economic, social, and cultural rights, the other on civil and political rights—raised, for the first time, true possibility that international law might provide some support for other form of self-determination. Both covenants state that “all peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of the right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”
And in 1970, the General Assembly unanimously approved a landmark resolution, known as the “Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States.” This Declaration was unique and groundbreaking for two reasons: one, for its expansion of the scope of the right of self-determination arguing that it be implemented through the “establishment of a sovereign and independent State, the free association with an independent State or the emergence into any other political status freely determined by a people;” two, while like the resolutions that preceded it, emphasized the preservation of territorial integrity, for containing a qualification specifying that the protection of territorial integrity applies to states “possessed of a government representing the whole people belonging to the territory without distinction as to race, creed or color.”
There is no consensus among scholars or governments on how this qualification affects the relationship between the right of self-determination and the principle of territorial integrity. Some have argued that the principle of self-determination can be accorded priority over the principle of territorial integrity if a state is not possessed of a government representing the whole people. Others, of course, disagree.
In my view, what has preceded and followed this particular qualification established in the “Friendly Relations” resolution, does provide bases to argue for the existence of what came to be known in the parlance of international law as the right for “remedial secession.” One may go back to the early 1920s to see evidence of this norm in the Aaland Island case, when non of this trajectory of the evolution of the self-determination law, whether in the context of decolonization or outside of it, ever existed.. And the juxtaposition of the natural law reasoning with the positivist tradition renders this notion even a more credible and applicable norm of international law.
Aaland Islands, located in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland, were under Swedish control from 1157 to 1809 and retained their Swedish linguistic, cultural heritage thereafter. After Sweden’s defeat by Russia in 1809, Finland, including Aaland, was ceded to Russia, and Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire. In 1917, shortly after the March Russian Revolution, Finland declared its independence in December 1917. Riding the Wilsonian self-determination wave, the Swedish population of Aaland opted for unification with Sweden causing serious turmoil and instability in the region. To address the issue, the League of Nations appointed two bodies of experts, each with a little different task, to examine the question.
Their decision was negative, and they basically argued that granting them their wish “it would be to uphold a theory incompatible with the very idea of the State as a territorial and political unity.” However, the Commission did suggest that under extreme oppression, self-determination by Aaland citizens might be possible. “The separation of a minority from the state of which it forms a part and its incorporation in another state can only be considered as an altogether exceptional solution, a last resort when the state lacks the will or the power to enact and apply just and effective guarantees.” This is a clear articulation for the right for remedial secession
In 1993, one of the rounds of Nagorno-Karabagh talks was organized in Mariehamn, the capital of Aaland Islands in Finland. Finland, at that time was, along with Russia, the co-chair of the Minsk Group process on Nagorno-Karabagh. Their purpose was to demonstrate to all participants, Armenian and Azeri, but particularly for the Nagorno-Karabagh representatives, how workable it is Aaland’s autonomous all Swede minority status within Finland. We stayed on the Island for about a week, and along our daily regular talks, were given tours to governmental institutions, had talks with officials and regular citizens. Clearly, it was a happy Swedish island, and the Swedish minority was the master of its faith and future. The only reminder of Finnish sovereignty over the Island were the Finnish flags on top of government buildings. As we were wrapping up the talks and the trip in general, the head of Nagorno-Karabagh delegation made an astounding statement: “We have truly liked what we have seen here, and I can officially declare that we will accept a similar autonomous status for Nagorno-Karabagh.” Then came the punchline: “but within Finland; not Azerbaijan.” We all laughed. But this is very telling and goes directly to heart of the notion of “remedial secession.”
Another example of institutional practice that supports the idea of secession as a remedial right was the Canadian Supreme Court interpretation of self-determination and secession in its 1996 landmark decision. The Federal Government of Canada asked the court for an advisory opinion on several aspects of Quebec separation, hoping that the result might discourage Quebecers from voting for it. The Court’s opinion was that “a right to secession only arises under the principle of self-determination of peoples at international law where a people is governed as part of a colonial empire, where a people is subject to alien subjugation, domination or exploitation; and possibly where a people is denied any meaningful exercise of its right to self-determination within the state of which it forms part.”
Interestingly, the Canadian Supreme Court in its decision also introduced a caveat, stating that if a referendum found in favor of independence, the rest of Canada “would have no basis to deny the right of the government of Quebec to pursue secession.” In my view, this statement has extremely consequential effect on the political aspects of the law of self-determination, and I will ask you to hold on to this thought until I come back to it towards the end of my talk.
Then, of course, there is the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) Advisory Opinion on Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence. As you know, on February 2008 Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence. In October of the same year, the General Assembly decided to ask the Court to render an advisory opinion on the following question: “Is the unilateral Declaration of Independence by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government of Kosovo in accordance with international law?” The court in its advisory opinion said that the practice of states both in the context of decolonization and outside of it “does not point to the emergence in international law of a new rule prohibiting the making of a declaration of independence in such cases.” That means the international law neither forbids nor supports secession. It is simply agnostic about it. Thus, the ICJ itself, in his opinion, adopted a very narrow approach, not providing any guidance regarding the contemporary scope of self-determination.
However, the value of the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion is not in its opinion per se, rather in its explanatory notes and the positions expressed by the more than forty or so states in their written and oral presentations to the court.
There are three important takeaways from all this which, in my view, reaffirm certain understandings that are critical in establishing positions regarding the right of self-determination in international law.
One is that as several participants in their arguments before the court contended that a prohibition of unilateral declaration of independence is implicit in the principle of territorial integrity, the court responded that the scope of the principle of territorial integrity is confined to the sphere of relations between states, citing the UN charter, the Friendly Relations resolution and OSCE Helsinki Final Act. Indeed, Article two of the UN Charter provides that “all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of many State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
Two is, that when several participants invoked resolutions of Security Council condemning particular declarations of independence, such as Southern Rhodesia (1965), Northern Cyprus (1983) and Respublika Srpska (1992), the court responded that the illegality attached to those declarations of independence stemmed not from the unilateral character of the declarations as such, but from the fact that they were, or would have been, connected with the unlawful use of force or other egregious violations of norm of general international law.
Three is, that the Court simply noted—taking no position—that “radically different views” were expressed on the question of whether a right of remedial secession exists and, if so, in what circumstances and if those circumstances were present in Kosovo.
This last point is hugely important because the bigger question and the more controversial part of the right of self-determination is not as much whether there is a right for remedial secession in international law. There is. Rather, the circumstances which one may maintain that would give rise to right to remedial secession are sufficiently present in any particular case.
The determination of the presence of circumstances is more of a political decision rather than a legal judgment, and it is the very critical component around which law and politics intertwine. However, as a result of the new developments in international law after the end of the Cold War, now in addition to unlawful use of military force, oppression and atrocities committed, the protection of minority rights and entitlement to democratic government are key elements in determining the circumstances that may give rise to the right for remedial secession.
Kosovo and Nagorno-Karabagh are very similar yet different. Both are geographically separate and ethnically, religiously distinct from the mother state. Both neighbor a country of their kin. Both have been disputed territories at one point in their history, both had autonomous status within their mother states during the Cold War, and their autonomous status revoked at one point. Both subjected to severe oppression and atrocities. The key difference is geopolitical.. Kosovo is at the heart of Europe and has history of triggering and implicating others in a broader conflict and jeopardize Europe’s and world’s peace and security. Hence the extraordinary global attention and the international community’s immediate and continued involvement in providing an early solution. Karabagh has taken a different path but gone through similar process. If ever Nagorno-Karabagh case goes to ICJ, the nature and content of the arguments will not be much different from Kosovo’s case.
And finally let me introduce two overbearing political developments which, in my view, complements the existing legal framework in support of the right of self-determination and secession.
First is that earlier, speaking of Canada’s Supreme Court decision on Quebec’s referendum I said hold on to the thought that the justices said that if a referendum found in favor of independence, the rest of Canada “would have no basis to deny the right of the government of Quebec to pursue secession.” This naturally means that political negotiations would have to follow to define the terms under which Quebec would gain independence, should it maintain that goal. This, clearly is a political decision; a recommendation of sort to reach a peaceful resolution.
This also implies that references to the state’s own constitution as a non-negotiable bar, as is being employed in case of Kurdistan, Catalonia and also Nagorno-Karabagh, to any concessions or even negotiations do not represent good faith, and cannot be justification for use of force to suppress the movement.
Second is that since the end of the Cold War, there has been at least a dozen of peace processes related to ethnic conflicts mediated by third parties and mandated by international organizations, where in their proposed solutions granting satisfaction to the aspirations of the minority groups have been the norm rather than the exception. Some have been fully implemented, others failed due to different circumstances and few others are still work in progress.
But the fact is that after lengthy and arduous processes, the mediators, in all those cases where the historical, legal and military realities have tilted the balance on the self-determination side, seem to have always favored to arrive to the inevitable sooner than later. The Road Map for Peace for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict; the Good Friday Accord for Northern Ireland; the Machakos Protocol for Sudan; Ahtisaari plan and Security Council Resolution for Kosovo; the Baker Peace Plan for the Western Sahara, the Dayton Accords for Bosnia, UNSC Resolution 1272 for East Timor; the Comprehensive Agreement for Bougainville; the New Constitution for the Union of Serbia and Montenegro, the Madrid Principles for Nagorno-Karabagh.
All self-determination or secessionist movements are, in essence and at heart, ethnic conflicts. They originate in history; get litigated, adjudicated, argued and negotiated in international organizations; always have their military component, since one or the other side and, most of the time, both sides use force against each other to achieve their goals; and finally, if they ever get resolved, are resolved at the political level. It is true that at the end of day it is the politics that has the final word. But history, law, military outcome and geopolitical realities on the ground, are all critical in determining the fate of a particular claim, and inevitably forces the political hand even of the most ardent opponents, including the mother states, of the right of self-determination and secession.
1 Comment
Dave says:
April 17, 2018 at 4:34 pm
And so, mr. Oskanian, what is Artsakh’s case specifically?
What are the arguments in its favor?
Let’s admit that, ultimately, it depends on politics and military strength.
International Charity Fraud in the history of mankind, has never been audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
Richard DeGraff [mailto:dickdegraff@gmail.com]
It just keeps getting better!
Is there just a little corruption in DC?
Read this. It explains all.
From 2001 to 2005 there was an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
A Grand Jury had been empaneled.
Governments from around the world had donated to the “Charity”.
Yet, from 2001 to 2003 none of those “Donations” to the Clinton Foundation were declared.
Hmmm, now you would think that an honest investigator would be able to figure this out.
Guess who took over this investigation in 2002?
Bet you can’t guess.
No other than James Comey.
Now, that’s interesting, isn’t it?
Guess who was transferred in to the Internal Revenue Service to run the Tax Exemption Branch of the IRS?
Your friend and mine,Lois “Be on The Look Out” (BOLO) Lerner.
Now, that’s interesting, isn’t it?
It gets better, well not really, but this is all just a series of strange coincidences, right?
Guess who ran the Tax Division inside the Department of Injustice from 2001 to 2005?
No other than the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, Rod Rosenstein.
Now, that’s interesting, isn’t it?
Guess who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during this timeframe???
I know, it’s a miracle, just a coincidence, just an anomaly in statistics and chances, Robert Mueller.
What do all four casting characters have in common?
They all were briefed and/or were front line investigators into the Clinton Foundation Investigation.
Now that’s just a coincidence, right?
Ok, lets chalk the last one up to mere chance.
Let’s fast forward to 2009.
James Comey leaves the Justice Department to go and cash-in at Lockheed Martin.
Hillary Clinton is running the State Department, on her own personal email server by the way.
The Uranium One “issue” comes to the attention of the Hillary.
Like all good public servants do, you know looking out for America’s best interest, she decides to support the decision and approve the sale of 20% of US Uranium to no other than, the Russians.
Now you would think that this is a fairly straight up deal, except it wasn’t, the People got absolutely nothing out of it.
However, prior to the sales approval, no other than Bill Clinton goes to Moscow, gets paid 500K for a one hour speech then meets with Vladimir Putin at his home for a few hours.
Ok, no big deal right?
Well, not so fast, the FBI had a mole inside the money laundering and bribery scheme.
Guess who was the FBI Director during this timeframe?
Yep, Robert Mueller.
Guess who was handling that case within the Justice Department out of the US Attorney’s Office in Maryland.
No other than, Rod Rosenstein.
Guess what happened to the informant?
The Department of Justice placed a GAG order on him and threatened to lock him up if he spoke out about it.
How does 20% of the most strategic asset of the United States of America end up in Russian hands when the FBI has an informant, a mole providing inside information to the FBI on the criminal enterprise?
Guess what happened soon after the sale was approved?
~145 million dollars in “donations” made their way into the Clinton Foundation from entities directly connected to the Uranium One deal.
Guess who was still at the Internal Revenue Service working the Charitable Division?
No other than, Lois Lerner.
Ok, that’s all just another series of coincidences, nothing to see here, right?
Let’s fast forward to 2015.
Due to a series of tragic events in Benghazi and after the 9 “investigations” the House, Senate and at State Department, Trey Gowdy who was running the 10th investigation as Chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi discovers that the Hillary ran the State Department on an unclassified, unauthorized, outlaw personal email server.
He also discovered that none of those emails had been turned over when she departed her “Public Service” as Secretary of State which was required by law.
He also discovered that there was Top Secret information contained within her personally archived email.
Sparing you the State Departments cover up, the nostrums they floated, the delay tactics that were employed and the outright lies that were spewed forth from the necks of the Kerry State Department, we shall leave it with this…… they did everything humanly possible to cover for Hillary.
Now this is amazing, guess who became FBI Director in 2013?
Guess who secured 17 no bid contracts for his employer (Lockheed Martin) with the State Department and was rewarded with a six million dollar thank you present when he departed his employer.
No other than James Comey.
Amazing how all those no-bids just went right through at State, huh?
Now he is the FBI Director in charge of the “Clinton Email Investigation” after of course his FBI Investigates the Lois Lerner “Matter” at the Internal Revenue Service and exonerates her.
Nope couldn’t find any crimes there.
Can you guess what happened next?
In April 2016, James Comey drafts an exoneration letter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile the DOJ is handing out immunity deals like candy.
They didn’t even convene a Grand Jury.
Like a lightning bolt of statistical impossibility, like a miracle from God himself, like the true “Gangsta” Comey is, James steps out into the cameras of an awaiting press conference on July the 8th of 2016, and exonerates the Hillary from any wrongdoing.
Can you see the pattern?
It goes on and on, Rosenstein becomes Asst. Attorney General, Comey gets fired based upon a letter by Rosenstein, Comey leaks government information to the press, Mueller is assigned to the Russian Investigation sham by Rosenstein to provide cover for decades of malfeasance within the FBI and DOJ and the story continues.
FISA Abuse, political espionage….. pick a crime, any crime, chances are…… this group and a few others did it.
All the same players.
All compromised and conflicted.
All working fervently to NOT go to jail themselves.
All connected in one way or another to the Clinton’s.
They are like battery acid, they corrode and corrupt everything they touch.
How many lives have these two destroyed?
As of this writing, the Clinton Foundation, in its 20+ years of operation of being the largest International Charity Fraud in the history of mankind, has never been audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
Let us not forget that Comey’s brother works for DLA Piper, the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation’s taxes.
Police have confirmed 10 people are dead and 15 are injured after a van rammed into a crowd of people walking on Yonge Street in north Toronto on Monday afternoon.
Alek Minassian, a 25-year-old man from Richmond Hill, Ont., is the alleged driver in the incident and is in police custody. He was arrested by Toronto police without any gunshots fired.
Minassian is believed to be responsible for hitting pedestrians with a white van in a busy part of the city. The suspect allegedly hit pedestrians on a one-kilometre stretch of Yonge Street near Finch Avenue, driving on the sidewalk and against the normal flow of the traffic at times, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders told reporters with high-ranking officials by his side.
“It’s very clear, just from a general perspective, to say the actions definitely looked deliberate,” Saunders said, adding the suspect is not believed to be known to Toronto police.
“We don’t rule out anything,” Saunders replied when asked if police are ruling out terrorism as a possible motive. “It is early — we’re not excluding anything.”
Saunders insisted “the city is safe” and police are not believed to be looking for any other suspects at this time. Toronto Police Services first tweeted about the incident being reported just before 1:30 p.m. ET.
With the current political regime and the policy that contradicts to the Ukraine’s national identity the country seems to be once again on the brink of a religious war. The conflict that started last year between the Ukraine’s Institute of Church and the national Parliament, The Verkhovna Rada, is getting to the new extreme today.
A number of Ukrainian politicians representing the political party “Svoboda” along with some members of the Rada have requested the Ukraine’s Ministry of culture for religious affairs to change the official name of the Ukrainian Orthodox church for the “Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine” claiming that Moscow had “grabbed” the Ukrainian national shrines. The move is allegedly explained by the growing Russian “aggression” in the Crimea and the Ukrainian region of Donbass.
According to experts from the Ukrainian Analytical Institute for policy management, the claims should be regarded as a typical blackmail policy aiming to undermine Russia’s credibility in Ukraine and among the Ukrainian authorities. Experts also suggest that the real reason behind these claims is to get the control over the Church and 12 million of its members to secure the victory of the ruling party in the upcoming elections. The fact that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church does not fall under the regulation of the Ukrainian Parliament by its Constitution adds even more irony to the overall situation.
However, such policy can lead to much more dramatic outcomes and destruct one of the last national values that still holds the country together – the people’s faith. Known for its deep cultural background defined by its history and religion that find its roots back in the 10th century the dominant part of the Ukrainian population is orthodox Slavic people who accurately keep their traditions and culture. Once they are destroyed the entire country might disappear from the map.
Buyukataman told me she’s filed complaints with both the IRS and the California attorney general’s office.
Tribal Affair
People gave millions of dollars to #NoDAPL (No to Dakota Access Pipeline). Where did the money go?
How Veterans Stand squandered $1.4 million raised around the protests at Standing Rock.
Paige Blankenbuehler
Image credit: Graham Smith
April 13, 2018 From the print edition
“The only way I’ll talk is if you sign over the rights to the interviews,” said Michael Wood. The 38-year-old activist slid a contract across the coffee shop table, complete with his aggressive, looping signature across the bottom of the page.
It was just a few days before Christmas in Playa Vista, California. Wood wore gray sweatpants with one leg hiked up to his knee, exposing a muscular, almost hairless leg and ankle-high socks in black Nike slides. He wore his dirty-blond hair high and tight.
A fireplace flickered, and a light breeze sent palm trees swaying.
Wood, who is originally from the suburbs of Baltimore, worked as a cop for 11 years and became known for speaking out against police brutality on Twitter. He was frequently quoted by the media, describing systemic problems in policing, particularly inside the Baltimore Police Department, his former employer. Today, Wood is perhaps better known for co-founding Veterans Stand for Standing Rock, a self-described “peaceful, unarmed militia” organized in 2016 to support Indigenous opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
At the time, he said, it seemed like a good idea. He never thought that his pilgrimage to the wintry plains of North Dakota would ultimately derail his life and leave him at the center of an ethical controversy. Within one year, Wood helped create Veterans Stand and raise more than $1.4 million in online donations. But that money remains largely unaccounted for — and the organization has since collapsed.
It’s highly irregular for a journalist’s source to demand exclusive rights to an interview. Wood already had been accused of misspending some of the money he raised and misleading donors in his work at Standing Rock. So that day, we agreed to talk off the record.
The next morning, I sat down with Wood again to revisit his ultimatum. “We’re not going to do that,” I told him. Wood just shrugged and agreed to talk: “All right, fuck it.”
In the course of a nine-month investigation, High Country News compiled publicly available data from GoFundMe and examined nearly 250 campaigns, each of which raised at least $3,000 for causes related to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Altogether, more than 138,000 people donated nearly $8 million. Many of those campaigns accepted money without necessarily offering accountability, either to their donors or to the causes they claimed to represent.
In the case of Veterans Stand, chaos and disarray become the hallmarks of a campaign that initially galvanized thousands of veterans and inspired more than 26,000 people from around the world to donate. That money was, at best, squandered and at worst, egregiously misspent.
Graham Smith
Wesley Clark Jr., a 49-year-old Army vet with short dark hair and wide-set eyes, makes a lot of his friends on Twitter. His page bears a red-and-yellow sigil as his profile photo, strikingly similar to the Ferrari logo. Underneath it, in white all-capital letters, is the word VAMOS, Spanish for “let’s go.” He began following Michael Wood, intrigued by his police reform efforts, and then, in October 2016, met him in person on the California set of The Young Turks, a left-leaning video blog. Both vets cared about social justice issues, and they stayed in touch.
A month later, Phyllis Young, an elder of the Standing Rock Sioux, asked Clark if he could use his connections with veterans to raise awareness of the struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline. “It lit a fire in my heart,” Clark said. “This seemed like a chance to do a whole lot of good. But also, I was just shocked. As the summer wound on and I was following what was going on out there, I saw these people clearly being abused. And it wouldn’t have happened if they were white.” Clark’s first call was to Wood, who answered it sitting in his suburban Philadelphia basement.
The #NoDAPL movement had begun earlier that year, in response to the proposed construction of a controversial oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Even as the tribe and its allies fought the pipeline in court, a grassroots movement erupted on social media and drew a powerful response from across the country. Protesters converged on the area, and numerous groups and individuals began fundraising, ostensibly to support the “water protectors” on the ground. Veterans Stand was one of the hundreds of campaigns that started GoFundMe pages.
Both Wood and Clark felt an urgent desire to get to Standing Rock as soon as possible, so they agreed to deploy on Dec. 3, just a short month away. Wood told me that his expectations were initially low, but his interest was piqued. And he was hopeful, too: With his social media status and Clark’s reputation, he believed they could mobilize veterans for Standing Rock. He believed the partnership could work. “So we got to work scheduling media and things out here and ended up with this chaotic schedule,” Wood said. “I can’t tell you how much media I did — it was just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, media. … I was doing emails, making phone calls — pulling all of the connections that I had.”
But there were signs of trouble from the beginning. Clark, according to Wood and other Veterans Stand volunteers, did not take naturally to a leadership role, so Wood stepped in. But their duties were never clearly delineated. Wood still acted as if Clark were in charge of the mission, while Clark followed his lead and assumed Wood was taking care of crucial planning. Responsibilities fell through the cracks, from communicating changes in plans to volunteers to arranging to get supplies delivered to the #NoDAPL camps. They needed a place to communicate with volunteers, but Clark didn’t know how to create events on Facebook. So that job fell to Wood. When Clark didn’t answer his phone, which happened frequently, according to Wood, volunteers would call Wood instead.
“When you look in retrospect, you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, that was a red flag,’ but like at the time I guess I would clearly have to say no, because I kept going forward, right?” Wood said. If anything had struck him as obviously wrong, he added, “I would have backed out. In retrospect, I think I could probably pick out like 30 things if I sit there and think about them.”
By Nov. 10, 2016, Wood and Clark had recruited a handful of volunteers. At Veterans Stand’s peak, some 20 volunteers were helping with general planning, logistics, safety, communication and money handling. Thousands of well-intentioned veterans made the journey to North Dakota. But throughout the organization’s rise and fall, only a small group — just five people — remained in crucial roles.
Dispatching from her funky studio apartment in Santa Monica, California, Sedef Buyukataman was one of them. A tall and lean woman of Turkish descent with short curly brown hair, she was brought on board by Clark. She considered him a close friend, even though they had only met on Twitter a few months prior. She offered to help with social media and, because she had a background in corporate human resources, assist Wood and Clark with general planning. Chris Duesing, a tall, tired-looking man whose shaggy blond hair had long since outgrown his former military crew cut, handled travel logistics.
Clark told me he felt uncomfortable linking his bank account to a GoFundMe page to raise money, so Wood set up the campaign’s page. But Clark’s name carried considerable clout; his father was a retired U.S. Army general who was active in politics, wrote several books, and campaigned unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. The junior Clark’s face therefore initially appeared as the campaign organizer on the public donation page. The GoFundMe page went live on Nov. 11, with a $100,000 goal. As the fledgling campaign’s message began to spread, money trickled into Wood’s personal bank account.
In North Dakota that November, as Veterans Stand was gaining momentum, thousands of protesters flocked to the demonstration. On Nov. 2, 2016, President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was re-evaluating the pipeline plans to see whether it was possible to reroute it. “We’re going to let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved in a way that I think is properly attentive to the traditions of the first Americans,” Obama said.
Meanwhile, Buyukataman and Duesing created a public Google spreadsheet that served as the roster for veterans interested in joining the demonstration. By Nov. 18, just a few days after the Veterans Stand campaign went live on GoFundMe, a few hundred supporters had signed on. At that point, the GoFundMe page had raised nearly $14,000 from 360 donors. Just five days later, it had raised nearly $114,000. The money was supposed to go toward food, transportation and supplies for any veterans who went to Standing Rock.
Then the protests took a dramatic turn. On Nov. 21, the Morton County Police Department clashed with the self-proclaimed water protectors at Backwater Bridge near the pipeline. Three hundred people were hospitalized with injuries, ranging from hypothermia — the police sprayed demonstrators with water cannons in freezing temperatures — to seizures, loss of consciousness and impaired vision from the impact of rubber bullets. One activist, New Yorker Sophia Wilansky, was injured by a concussion grenade. Not since the American Indian Movement’s stand at Wounded Knee in 1973 had government hostility toward Indigenous people been so overt, and so violent. On Nov. 28, Wood increased the GoFundMe campaign goal to $750,000.
“Everything exploded after that,” Buyukataman recalled.
The roster rapidly filled. Hundreds of volunteers became a thousand, and many had questions that neither Wood nor the other organizers knew how to answer. Would food be provided? Was a ride-share arranged? How would donations cover costs? Wood and Buyukataman fielded hundreds of messages on Facebook, Twitter and the GoFundMe page. Wood, Clark, Buyukataman and Duesing scrambled to organize the thousands of volunteers, but between frantic phone calls, videoconferences and uncoordinated messaging, plans changed with the whims of whoever took charge that day. Despite the growing chaos, Wood was pleased; according to Buyukataman and other volunteers, he seemed to view the deluge of support as the only important barometer of success.
The GoFundMe account was receiving donations at a terrifying speed. By Nov. 30, just four days before Veterans Stand’s planned deployment to Standing Rock, the group’s online donation page had raised $678,000. In response, Wood increased the campaign’s campaign goal from $750,000 to $1 million.
“We were all very surprised by how everything took off so quickly,” Buyukataman said. “When we hit the 2,000 mark on the signup roster, both Chris (Duesing) and I sounded the alarm: ‘We need to shut this down; it’s too many people, we don’t have the capacity to manage this.’ … Both (Clark and Wood) really were very high on the response that they received — they were reluctant to let us even cap the number. They were very much enjoying the attention that they were getting. Unfortunately, I think their egos got a lot bigger, and they attributed the reason for people signing up to be the draw of their own personal charisma or name-brand recognition.”
On Dec. 4, 2016, Wood left Baltimore for Bismarck. Already, more than 2,500 veterans had left for Standing Rock. They were scattered across the country. Even as money poured into Wood’s account, the logistical problems were compounded: Buses were stranded, drivers unpaid, veterans needed cash for gas. Volunteers ran late, and Clark could not be reached.
As Wood’s plane pulled up to the gate, the GoFundMe campaign hit $1 million. By 10 a.m., he was at cruising altitude, hurtling toward North Dakota.
Click to see the data from #NoDAPL projects on GoFundMe.
Far from Standing Rock — through computers, cellphones and tablets — countless people donated to the #NoDAPL protests. Hidden among the idealists, however, were opportunists and con artists, eager to cash in on this explosion of benevolence.
Crowd-funding sites like GoFundMe are a relatively new phenomenon. There are few regulations safeguarding people who give money to causes, however dubious. In fact, the site advises donors to “only donate to people you personally know and trust” — meaning that the donors themselves are considered accountable. While the platform allows people to report suspicious and possibly fraudulent campaigns, little public evidence exists that GoFundMe actively polices complaints. GoFundMe did not respond to HCN’s request for an interview.
The data HCN uncovered in its investigation revealed a wide spectrum of efforts. Eleven GoFundMe campaigns, for example — all created to build yurts at Standing Rock — raised a total of nearly $70,000, from more than 1,200 donors. One plea for support came from a California-based chiropractor eager to offer his services to “the warriors” fighting the pipeline. He ended up raising more than $5,400. “The conditions are far too cold to set up my own clinic,” the chiropractor wrote on GoFundMe. “I wanted to just let you know that we donated a tipi a wood stove and a half cord of firewood to a gentleman who grew up at Standing Rock.” Thousands of dollars were donated to the “Bunk Bus” — a service known in music festival circles for providing kits to test the authenticity and quality of illicit substances. While some campaigns provided receipts and accounted for how much money they spent on their GoFundMe pages, the majority did not. That makes it particularly challenging to track exactly how — and whether — donations were used to support Standing Rock. (Full disclosure: High Country News issued an email on Nov. 29, 2016, asking readers to help us “Send an HCN Reporter to Standing Rock.” The magazine received $13,683 as a direct result, allowing us to send a reporter, hire a photographer, and commission dispatches and analyses on the protests.)
Some campaigns continued raising money well after the #NoDAPL camps were disbanded. Red Warrior Camp, which was ordered to decamp in early 2017 by the Standing Rock Sioux tribal council, continued to collect money. For seven months, the campaign collected funds to the tune of nearly $300,000, with the most recent donation given in July 2017. The campaign’s organizer, Tara Houska, the national campaigns director for the Indigenous-led environmental organization Honor the Earth, did not respond to multiple requests to be interviewed for this story.
“It’s startling,” said Michael Johnson, assistant director of development for the Native American Rights Fund. The annual budget at his organization is about $10 million a year, with which the nonprofit maintains a legal fund to defend the rights of tribal nations and organizations. Donations to Veterans Stand, he said, represented “serious money that was generated to support the community and the protest actions that were happening at Standing Rock. And at the end of the day, these protesters left, and the community is left holding the bag — and the same underlying issues remain.” The Standing Rock Sioux did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Graham Smith
When Michael Wood arrived at the Bismarck airport, the reality hit him. He saw large groups of veterans in their old uniforms and badges: Desert Storm, Vietnam, Afghanistan. They were everywhere, searching for outlets to charge cellphones, asking where the buses for Standing Rock were. There was camaraderie and a growing excitement as they discussed their shared mission. Wood, not in uniform, slid past unnoticed, toward the baggage claim.
“I wasn’t aware of really how many people were coming. When I landed and saw all of these fucking vets,” Wood recalled, laughing incredulously, “I was like, ‘Oh no, we’re in trouble. This is a problem! This is going to be a problem. It’s coming. There wasn’t a shuttle going back and forth from the airport to Standing Rock. … So people showed up at the airport, and you need to have signs and shuttles. But no one was there with signs or information or doing shuttles or anything like that.”
Once he retrieved his bag, Wood climbed into a rental car driven by Anthony Diggs, a homeless former Marine and volunteer from San Diego. Diggs, an olive-skinned 26-year-old with curly brown hair, talks quickly and at times incoherently. I spoke with Diggs recently, and he recalled running down the list of problems waiting for Wood: Veterans were not meeting at the designated check-in point in Eagle Butte, while volunteers were scattered from the Oceti Sakowin camp to the Prairie Knights Casino in Cannon Ball. There was a lot of miscommunication. People were stranded on the side of the road outside Bismarck, where yet another bus had broken down. Thousands of dollars worth of supplies had not been delivered to the post office box that, according to Wood, Clark failed to set up. On top of that, a blizzard was expected that night.
“I remember Diggs just saying, ‘Man, there’s no cell service here either,’ and we had a (satellite) phone that somehow never made it there from California,” Wood told me. “It was a mess.”
The inside of the Prairie Knights Casino was a disorienting sight. In stark contrast to the blinking and bleeping of slot machines, the floors of the hotel and gaming area looked like a makeshift emergency shelter. As the weather became increasingly sinister and local law enforcement grew more aggressive, protesters fled the Oceti Sakowin camps and crowded in. Sleeping bags and canteens were piled in corners. Every available outlet was plugged with chargers.
Wood hoped to find Clark and other volunteers for Veterans Stand. Instead, he met a new cast of opportunists and idealists rising through the ranks of his topsy-turvy outfit. Loreal Black Shawl, a 38-year-old woman of Oglala Lakota and Northern Arapaho descent, was recruited from the casino floor to be a spokeswoman for the group. A young, outgoing veteran herself, Black Shawl often wore square-framed glasses and a black ball cap with a feather and the words “Native Veteran” across the front. She joined at a particularly chaotic time. When Wood arrived, he found thousands of water protectors seeking shelter from the imminent blizzard and more than 2,500 veterans, who were ready for marching orders that hadn’t come. In the chaos, Wood managed to reconnect with Duesing. Buyukataman, however, was still en route to the casino with a busload of veterans. Wood abruptly decided to put Buyukataman, whom he knew as kind, calm and collected, in charge of handling all the reimbursements.
“There was no plan, and suddenly this dropped into my lap,” Buyukataman later told me. “(Wood and Clark) hadn’t done any leading, so everything was very last-minute. I was hurriedly putting together a reimbursement form from my bus seat on the way to North Dakota. And there were already hundreds of vets there. … It was just a recipe for disaster.”
In the meantime, Wood stationed himself by a payphone and began reimbursing veterans with what cash he was able to withdraw from his bank account. He was having problems accessing the GoFundMe money, and with nowhere to sleep, he curled up in the corner with a blanket, using his bag as a pillow.
When Buyukataman arrived at the casino the morning of Dec. 5, she was shocked. Hundreds of veterans were demanding reimbursement by cash or check, handing receipts to “whoever looked important,” she recalled. When Buyukataman finally located Wood, he passed her a haphazard collection of receipts or scraps of paper with names, phone numbers and addresses scribbled on the back. “There were envelopes all over the place, and no one was really accountable for them,” she said. “I started grabbing them, but a good portion of (original receipts) got outright lost.”
Buyukataman realized that no one had been using the roster to keep track of or reimburse the nearly 3,000 veterans who had signed up. Hundreds of people were unaccounted for, and Veterans Stand was supposed to be responsible for them. Meanwhile, Duesing and Pate Hutson, a Navy veteran from Upper Arlington, Ohio, struggled to bring order to the camps.
“No one knew where to go or what to do. The supplies that had supposedly been ordered were nowhere to be found,” Duesing said. “You had this group of individuals who all had a different impression of what was happening. Some came for a fight; some came for a peaceful war of some sort. There were a lot of vets who suffer from issues like PTSD and traumatic brain injuries, and they were getting triggered. Thousands of people were sleeping all over the place, without the supplies that had been promised and without their medications — or money to get home.”
Then the blizzard hit.
Temperatures hovered around 3 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind gusts hit 50 mph. Propane fuel gelled up in the cold, and an estimated 4,000 veterans organized by Veterans Stand were stranded, scattered across the plains, on the reservation and at the casino.
On Dec. 5, just hours after she arrived, Buyukataman was frantically stuffing thousands of receipts into envelopes, many with unintelligible names and addresses scribbled on them. Suddenly, uproarious cheering broke out: The Obama administration had denied a crucial easement for the pipeline. The Army Corps would have to halt construction and issue an environmental impact statement with “full public input and analysis” before it approved the river crossing at Lake Oahe. The water protectors had won a crucial battle.
“At that point, Michael said, ‘Well, everybody, we won! Let’s go home!’ ” Buyukataman said. “Chris (Duesing) and I just looked at each other, shocked, like, ‘What the fuck is going to happen now?’ ”
Buyukataman wondered how everyone would get home. How could they possibly keep track of reimbursements now? She was troubled to see a wave of disappointment ripple through the veterans; some had clearly come for a fight, and now they weren’t going to get one. Meanwhile, Clark finally emerged from his curious absence, appearing at a “healing ceremony” in the pavilion of the casino. The casino auditorium was filled with a mix of Standing Rock Sioux elders and tribal members, veterans and water protectors. The dozens of journalists who sat on the floor in the front row wielded cellphones and cameras as Clark spoke slowly into a microphone. “We stole minerals from your sacred hills,” Clark said as he knelt in front of a small group of Sioux spiritual leaders. “We didn’t respect you. We polluted your Earth; we’ve hurt you in so many ways. … We’ve come to say we’re sorry.” Wood and Buyukataman felt uncomfortable. They felt like Clark was drawing attention away from the moment, from the Standing Rock Sioux, and focusing it on himself.
Later that day, Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II ordered an estimated 14,000 protesters to go home. Clark left on a private jet while Wood, Duesing and Buyukataman tried to figure out what would happen next. “At this point, it basically became a FEMA mission,” Wood told me. “How do we get everyone out of here alive?”
There were still hundreds of veterans unaccounted for, and the remaining campaign organizers scrambled to figure out how to get home. The deployment, they agreed, was crazy — far beyond anything that anybody had expected. But Veterans Stand had raised more than $1 million, and with that money, Wood, Buyukataman and Duesing believed they could turn the organization into something that could truly make a difference. When they got home, they planned to use the GoFundMe money to seed a nonprofit organization. Wood announced that he would be president, and Buyukataman readily signed on. “At that point, I wanted to make sure that everyone got the reimbursements that they were promised,” she told me.
Graham Smith
In February 2017, Buyukataman was still combing through the thousands of receipts left over from the December deployment. “I had processed all of the receipts — I had more than 1,700 receipts to contend with — and came up to about $7,000 that needed to be reimbursed,” Buyukataman said. “At that point, we really could have just finished it in a way that was right.” Clark had by then severed his connection with the campaign, but Wood continued to oversee the organization’s mission, along with Buyukataman, Duesing, Diggs and Michelle Panzironi, a volunteer based in New York.
However, Buyukataman had begun to have serious reservations: There was no transparency, she felt, and there had been questionable uses of the money. Wood sent thousands of dollars to Loreal Black Shawl — who helped in December but then discontinued her service — without consulting the rest of the group. “He would just handle certain reimbursements without telling me, and it would be for a lot of money, without any accounting of what he was paying for,” Buyukataman said. She couldn’t keep track of the decisions made by the fledgling board of Veterans Stand, she said, and she often disagreed with the direction that Wood wanted to go. Despite his status as president, however, Wood maintains that he was merely a volunteer who never made key decisions.
At one point, according to Buyukataman, Wood suggested they use part of the GoFundMe donations to set up a home office in Southern California, where he could live while running media operations. “We all just went along with it,” Buyukataman said. “Like, ‘Um, OK?’ We didn’t have much of a choice, really. If you disagreed with Michael, he would get upset and then just do whatever he wanted anyway.” Wood had taken on Diggs, who was then homeless in the LA area, as his personal protégé. Diggs could live in the condo, he said, and do important organization tasks. Wood said he hoped that Diggs would, in time, take his place as president of Veterans Stand.
Veterans Stand had raised more than $1 million, but it is unclear how much of that was spent on actual organizational activities. Wood attempted to reassure his donors on GoFundMe in January 2017: “Rest assured, your donations have been put to good use. We’ve bought countless supplies, winter gear, hotel rooms, trains, planes, automobile rentals and much more to help the vets make the journey and stay safe. I say ‘countless’ because we are still actively buying these things as we speak.” Still, he never gave a complete picture of how the money was spent.
By February 2017, Veterans Stand had cobbled together bylaws for its board of directors and submitted nonprofit organization registration paperwork to the California attorney general’s office. With the chaos of Standing Rock behind it, Veterans Stand felt like its true mission was forming. On March 10, Wood and Diggs travelled to Washington, D.C., for a demonstration urging the public to support the water protectors and divest from banks that helped finance the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Buyukataman and Duesing, who travelled to the demonstration separately, told me that Wood and Diggs spent most of their time in a hotel room munching marijuana edibles — an allegation the two deny — before chaining themselves to the SunTrust Bank as part of the protest.
Wood updated the organization’s GoFundMe page, stating that he had begun steps to operate the group as a registered 501(c)3. He created a website describing Veterans Stand as a “fully compliant 501(c)3”— a banner prominently displayed on the webpage. That winter, Wood created a second GoFundMe page, where an additional $280,000 was raised. My interviews with Wood, Diggs and other organization members left me uncertain about whether the group was, in fact, a 501(c)3 or a 501(c)4. In a formal information request to the Internal Revenue Service, however, I found out that it was neither: The organization never completed the registration paperwork. In fact, the group never responded to a follow-up request from the California attorney general for more information.
Wood and Diggs promised the public an audit, but never followed through. “There hasn’t been public disclosure yet, because, while we were working at auditing December, we were called back into action when Trump signed the memorandum which cleared the way for the continuation of the Dakota Access Pipeline,” Diggs said. “With limited manpower, and literally thousands of receipts and expenses to account for, the audit had to be delayed, out of necessity.”
Veterans Stand has not yet released an audit — and is unlikely to ever do so.
“I don’t think (an audit) is a valid use of money,” Wood told me. “(Donations) were donated to me to do what I wanted with the thing. … We were looking at $20,000 to $30,000 for someone to come in and do a forensic audit to come in and trace it, but at no point in time did anyone think that was a good idea. It’s a board. They voted not to. If you have evidence that we have misused funds, then go tell the damn IRS and file a complaint.”
In April 2017, Wood moved into a condo in Playa Vista, California, along with his wife, his 13-year-old daughter, and Anthony Diggs. Wood told me that the rest of the organization was in favor of the move. He claimed Buyukataman and Diggs selected the property, but they both deny this. On numerous occasions, in interviews for this story, other members expressed discomfort with the arrangement. Veterans Stand paid 14 months’ rent upfront, $4,200 a month — a total of nearly $60,000, including rent, fees and moving expenses — all using donation money. “I was uprooting my family,” Wood said. “I needed security.”
People inside the organization began asking questions. Who had access to the organization’s credit cards? Why didn’t they have a tax identification number? How much was still owed in reimbursements? How should they respond to people on Twitter? Few of the central leaders could even remember who sat on the board. Meanwhile, Veterans Stand was drifting away from its original GoFundMe mandate. Wood and Diggs wanted to concentrate on outreach to veterans, but others wanted to continue direct action with the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux, who were still fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. With little leadership or direction, Duesing and Pate Hutson continued work on the Standing Rock Reservation. They returned to North Dakota in March, putting their personal money on the line, using their own credit and debit cards. Hutson told me that he spent more than $3,000, which he pulled from his wedding fund. Because he was never reimbursed, he claims, he and his fiancée had to delay their wedding. Duesing wanted a tax-exempt number for supplies, but neither Wood nor anyone else in the organization was able to provide it. Wood also claimed that spending limits on the organizational credit cards — which neither Duesing nor Hutson had access to — had been reached. (Wood told me that Hutson and Duesing were acting as “rogue agents” and never had approval to go back to North Dakota.) “Things were getting really fishy,” Duesing said. “It was like, ‘OK, we agreed to dispatch on this mission, but there’s no money to execute it?’ It didn’t make any sense.”
The organization, which by then had raised just over $1.4 million, began to buckle.
Graham Smith
In June of 2017, tensions finally erupted during a videoconference call between Wood, Diggs and other volunteers. Buyukataman, Duesing and Hutson no longer trusted the organization’s leadership. Despite Wood’s promises, he had never submitted an application to turn Veterans Stand into a registered nonprofit. “They were lying,” Hutson said of Wood and Diggs. “I honest to God don’t think it was malfeasance at that point, it was people that didn’t know what to do. … They were in way over their head(s) and didn’t know it and were just trying to cover their asses.”
One Twitter user, @jennylove203030, tweeted Wood in July 2017: “Using charity money to pay for where you and your family live is illegal. You will be found out and arrested.” On Reddit, a user called Whiplash011, a veteran who had volunteered for the December deployment, asked about the money: “4 Bands is still standing in cannball, ND (sic) and you have pulled your funding, where is that $275k going now if not for this effort? As was indicated on the gofundme page. And by what authority are you keeping money that was donated for a specific cause to be used another way?”
Despite the increasingly vocal criticism, Wood remained defiant. He responded to his critics on Twitter: “None of this was charity money, it was all a personal donation. Legally, I could have done anything I wanted.” He threaded several messages on his account, including: “Let’s be clear. The (GoFundMe) fundraiser was not a charity. Legally it was all personal donation to me, to do as I pleased,” Wood wrote. “Then I turned around and donated 100% of that money to create Veterans Stand, which did not exist until months later.” When I spoke with Wood, he was unrepentant. “I could have taken money — given myself a salary,” he shrugged. “But I didn’t.”By August 2017, Duesing, Hutson, Panzironi and Buyukataman had left Veterans Stand. Panzironi, a demure woman, had dealt with most of the deployment’s bus nightmare in December by phone from New York. She is still trying to make sense of what happened to Veterans Stand. “It’s been a year and the accusations have not stopped, and they continue to grow and get louder,” Panzironi told me. “I was just trying to do a good thing, and now I feel that I was part of something that was nefarious and probably illegal. I am now of the belief that something was not right about the entire situation.”
Despite the tumult of Veterans Stand, Duesing and Buyukataman sparked a romantic relationship and started their own organization:Veteran Service Corps (not to be confused with the Veterans Action Network), tasked with volunteering with the Cheyenne River Sioux. Duesing and Buyukataman pledged that their new organization would “protect and defend peaceful water protectors standing for their sacred land, civil liberties and clean water.” (Buyukataman recently resigned from the Veteran Service Corps.) According to Duesing, the new organization got no financial help from Veterans Stand. Hutson, who also returned home, got married and occasionally got involved with Duesing’s new venture. Michael Wood and Anthony Diggs were the last two volunteers remaining with Veterans Stand. They abandoned their original mission — helping the Standing Rock Sioux fight the Dakota Access Pipeline — and turned to broader activism for recovering veterans.
To do that, Wood and Diggs spent $65,000 of the organization’s money to go on the Vans Warped Tour, a popular punk-rock summer festival that tours the country. They paid $15,000 for tour personnel time and services; $20,000 for “custom content” and another $30,000 for WorldViz Virtual Reality Services. They set up a Veterans Stand booth promoting a virtual reality technology that was supposed to help returning war veterans cope with civilian life and the effects of PTSD.
“I was just like, ‘What does this have to do with Standing Rock at all?’ ” Buyukataman said. “I don’t know in all honesty at that point what they thought they were doing, but they did nothing with that money to benefit the Standing Rock cause.” Members of Veterans Stand provided HCN with internal financial documents that reveal a range of questionable spending — including a number of transfers from the Veterans Stand account to personal bank accounts and a receipt for more than $500 to Ducati, an Italian motorcycle company. Wood claimed he “may have bought a helmet and forgot” and that additional bank statements were “stolen” by members of the group. The remaining receipts, he told me, don’t provide an accurate picture of the organization’s spending.
But the ghosts of Standing Rock were beginning to catch up with Diggs and Wood. Brandon Boucher, a veteran from New Hampshire who participated in the December 2016 protests, complained that he never received his promised reimbursement. “Where is the audit that Michael Woods (sic) promised us back in February about how your ‘charity’ spend (sic) our donations?” Boucher asked Diggs on a Reddit thread. “I donated to help rideshare for people wanting to get out there and for supplies for the camps, of which there is still one out there, legally standing, still, with no support from your organization, as you promised.” “I didn’t donate so that these guys could go on the Warped Tour,” Boucher told me. “It was just unbelievable.”
As part of the Warped Tour, the two Veterans Stand members went to Albuquerque; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Salt Lake City and Nashville. When they got to Kansas City, Wood’s relationship with Diggs began to dissolve. One disagreement led to another: Wood said Diggs hadn’t taken care of all the logistics needed to deal with the tour staff, and their virtual reality technology wasn’t making the splash they hoped for. So Wood abandoned the tour. “Dude is a sociopath,” Diggs said of his former friend.
By August 2017, Anthony Diggs had also walked away — from the condo he shared with Wood, from their friendship, and from the organization and what he had seen as its potential to help veterans like him. “I had just gotten used to him leaving unannounced, and I thought this was like any of those other times,” Wood said. “But he never came back.” In a text message to another volunteer, Wood announced that Diggs would be his “last attempt at a human relationship.”
Diggs returned to the streets of Southern California, where he had been homeless before and would be homeless again.
Veterans Stand faded from view, too. In August 2017, without fanfare, the organization’s Twitter account, Facebook page and website were all taken down, and Wood deleted his Twitter account. Neither Wood nor Diggs will say who erased Veterans Stand from the internet. Clark told me recently that he’s spent the past year recovering from a “mental breakdown” from his time in Standing Rock. “I’m glad that I got out when I did.”
There is no way to know how much money Veterans Stand still has in its coffers; GoFundMe doesn’t release information about campaign funds,
the funds were diverted into Wood’s bank account, 50+5 1`and the organization never released an audit to the public or its many donors.
Wood has claimed that he reimbursed 4,500 veterans — far more volunteers than ever signed onto the official roster — giving them $245 each. He also claims that 8 percent of the money went to various banking, money transfer and GoFundMe fees. Of course, neither the $60,000 for his condo and the $65,000 spent for the Vans Warped Tour were listed on the GoFundMe page, and for 10 months after Standing Rock, the organization masqueraded as a nonprofit despite failing to complete the necessary registration.
Since Veteran Stand’s implosion, Buyukataman told me she’s filed complaints with both the IRS and the California attorney general’s office.
“The really unfortunate thing about this is that there is a lot of good stuff that happens on GoFundMe,” the Native American Rights Fund’s Michael Johnson said. “Outside of the damage done to the tribe, my heart really goes out to these veterans who wanted to go out and do this good thing and made their plans and their trip on a certain set of expectations and idea of support. They got left out high and dry by one of their own.”
There is no clear explanation of what happened to the $1.4 million that Veterans Stand raised, or who should be held responsible for how it was spent. Even though Wood was the organization’s president, controlled the funding, and was the only one who remained from start to finish, others were involved in the effort: Buyukataman, Duesing and Diggs. And even though it was clear to most of them that Veterans Stand was falling apart, they clearly outstayed their welcome — and did so on the tab of their unwitting donors. And they were far from the only crowd-funded “charities” that have failed to account for all the funds they received and spent. For this investigation, HCN dove into an $8-million sea of dodgy charities. Veterans Stand was just one of them.
“I took fucking zero,” Wood said. “If I wanted to write myself a $100,000 salary, I could have easily done that and it would have been justifiable. The most you can do is catch me in a misrememberance.”
In March 2017, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg denied a motion by the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes for a preliminary injunction against Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. — the company responsible for building the Dakota Access Pipeline.
In his decision, Boasberg explained that the tribes would be unlikely to prevail in their lawsuit and denied their request to halt construction of the pipeline, or to stop oil from flowing through it once construction was completed.
Today, Bakken oil flows through the pipeline, and Wood lives in a condo flanked by palm trees and luxury vehicles, financed by donations meant to help veterans and the Standing Rock Sioux.
Graham Smith
Paige Blankenbuehler is an assistant editor for High Country News.
This coverage is supported by contributors to the High Country News Enterprise Journalism Fund.
Dave says:
